


The Slow Road Home

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [75]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Galaxies (Video Game), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, Romance, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23981401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: An exploration of Bacara and touch, on his way home
Relationships: CC-8826 | Neyo/CT-0292 | Vaughn, CT 7567 | Rex/CC-1138 | Bacara/Kit Fisto, CT-7567 | Rex/CC-1138 | Bacara
Series: Soft Wars [75]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 66
Kudos: 533





	The Slow Road Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sheApunk89](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheApunk89/gifts).



> This is for sheApunk89 who is a dreadful enabler and I would like to fake hating it a little longer plz k thx bai
> 
> @roxythered this one ISN'T yours. I'm still working yours. I'm determined, and it's going to be the sauciest saucy I believe in myself! Well TBH yours is two. There's the sweet bits of yours going into The Big One On The Fourth, and the erm 'rest' a saucy side. Please wait for me a little longer!
> 
> Now with [Vaughn and Neyo Art](https://thellamacorn.tumblr.com/post/617141217530085377/welcome-to-crack-ship-hell-commander-neyo-getting) by the incredible[@thellamacorn](https://thellamacorn.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr!

It’s _all of Torrent_ , Bacara decides, that legitimately cannot exist only in their own space. He’d thought, for about a day, that it was just Rex.

He doesn’t actually know who it is that’s against his arm. He thinks he should: the patterns shaved into his hair are distinctive, as is the aurebesh ringing the left side of his head. He’s out of uniform though, and without a shell to go off the name escapes Bacara.

That’s another thing he’s noticed: No one in Torrent is in shell when not on duty, and few are even in blacks. They wears civs off the clock. Soft, comfortable looking things that don’t constrict. Bacara doesn’t understand that either.

He didn’t know what he’d thought when the vod had wandered between their tables, asked ‘may I’ and gestured vaguely somewhere between Bacara and his meal. When Bacara had nodded, he hadn’t expected the vod to move in, was unprepared for the lightning flash of _another_ _person_ separated by nothing more than two layers of clothing.

The vod smiles at him, a quicksilver quirk of lips and flash of teeth and grabs… _something_. Some canister of a seasoning that tickles at the back of Bacara’s nose from across the table. The vod retreats, his heat draining away from the near searing against his arm and Bacara can breathe.

Bacara’s hand drifts to his arm and he almost expects to find a burn. His skin glitters with the memory of it.

The vod returns to his own table. One of Rex’s nat-borns, the boy, waits for him to sit and slips up inside his guard like he belongs.

It’s all of Torrent, Bacara decides, and wonders how they fit all of who they are inside their shells.

* * *

It might be a symptom of the world beyond the blockade.

Afterwards, they have a breath of moments before Kit can’t bear the press of their minds any longer. In those moments, while Bacara’s mind still whispers empty and his limbs lay lax and heavy where he or Kit or Rex has left them, Kit gets curious. Exploratory.

He doesn’t track scars, though Bacara would have thought that would arrest the eyes first. Bacara has not had an easy life, and he bears proof of his survivals curling down from a tight knot high on his neck to a hair-thin trace across the meat of his left calf. Kit doesn’t ignore them, but neither does he pay them much due.

He runs cooler than vode. His fingers leave trails of quiet, sparking chill along the lines of Bacara’s muscles, down the planes of his body. He slowly rolls the side of a thumb inside the fold of Bacara’s elbow and Bacara finds he can’t watch. He can barely breathe.

He closes his eyes. If he looks away he’ll see Rex, and he fears that somehow the sight will undo him.

Kit rocks the heels of his hands up into the divot of Bacara’s hips, as if to make sure they still fit. Bacara flinches, a flinch that starts at the surface of his skin and works it’s way to his nerves and bones instead of the other way around. He chokes on a whine, high and searching as if wounded.

Kit kisses a cool apology to the curve of Bacara’s bicep.

“You are lovely,” he says and his nova-colored eyes, seeming larger for the gorgeous ring of green-gold speckled lek, bore through Bacara to find something soft and frightened.

Rex carefully extracts him, sweeps him away before the tears he feels threatening the base of his throat spill.

This is life beyond the blockade, Bacara thinks, and fears how little they care for containing themselves in their shells.

* * *

It’s different for droids; they exist in code. The edges of a person are blurred.

WAC-47 intercepts Bacara six steps from his shuttle and bubbles ‘Corporal’, as he usually does. A step later, he installs himself with all four limbs around Bacara’s knee. That isn’t usual.

He’s an interesting kind of friend, WAC-47. Forty seven pounds of strange, linked to Bacara solely by virtue of being the only other person Neyo has ever bothered trying to tolerate. It’s united them, that quest to keep Neyo as sane as they can, but it hasn’t ever _connected_ them.

Bacara slows. Stops. WAC-47 buries his sole optical sensor against the back of Bacara’s thigh.

“WAC?” He asks, because if he asks ‘ _Neyo?_ ’ he’s afraid of what the answer might be.

Their lives are short and hazardous. Bacara and Neyo live in the kind of galaxy where they’d stopped bothering to paint their shells after the first six months of war; the plates are destroyed too often to waste the time, and chances are there wouldn’t be anyone to have at an armoring anyway. They see each other too rarely.

Bacara still writes both _Neyo_ and _Rex_ inside his off-hand bracer every time. He hasn’t ever asked if Neyo still does the same. He’s never asked Rex to start.

“I’m an exceptionally versatile droid,” WAC-47 whines. “And what’s more I’m _really cool_. I did that thing that one time I can’t tell you about but it was _really really cool_. I’m better than just a _pilot_ I can do _all sorts_ of special missions okay? And I’m gonna do it _the best_.”

WAC-47’s words are enough to slowly ease the chill of dread out of Bacara’s bones. He’s serious when he needs to be, and he’s decided he only ever needs to be when in defense of Neyo. Whatever this is, fatal or world-ending or anything of the sort, it’s not affecting Neyo.

Carefully, Bacara cradles the back of his disc-shaped head. WAC-47 buzzes. Droids don’t sigh. And they don’t sniff.

“The _best_ ,” he repeats. “You tell Master Neyo that okay. Don’t forget. _Best;_ it’s important.”

“Okay, WAC,” Bacara soothes. “Okay. I’ll tell him.” It’s warm, where WAC-47 has gripped on to him. His internal heaters whir diligently and it’s nice, that heat around Bacara’s right knee. He’s always had the most trouble with that one.

“And don’t say I told you to say it.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

The boundaries of personhood are different, when your hardware is all shell and that shell is custom. Compatible connections must be harder to find.

* * *

Each time, it gets just a little harder to pour himself into his shell.

Rothax hands him his new requisitions but doesn’t let go. There’s a terrified kind of determined in his eyes that gives Bacara pause.

Bacara doesn’t know if he remembers ever seeing Rothax’s eyes before. Even when he can be persuaded to forgo his helmet, Bacara can’t picture a time when he’d removed his goggles. He must have, at least when he on-boarded and probably through training. Some days Bacara doesn’t remember how long ago that must have been.

Rothax’s goggles are slung around his neck. His eyes are so pale a blue they’re almost white.

“Staff Sergeant?” Bacara isn’t a gentle man, isn’t given to gentle words but he’s careful with the ones he uses. Some days, an unintended word could be all it takes to shatter someone. Out here, there’s few opportunities to put someone back together.

“It’ll be easier,” Rothax says, his words a tremble. “If. If I help. Since your arm, sir.”

Bacara is down to 70% mobility in his left shoulder, but the shrapnel’s been pulled and the wound dressed. He needs another bacta patch in six hours and a full night’s sleep and he’ll be fine.

The Seps just took the fuel drilling fields and are igniting the mines; Bacara will be lucky if he has time to grab a ration bar before he needs to take the next rotation back downrange. Sleep’s not a luxury he can afford.

It’s practical, he tells himself and releases the new chest and backplate. Logical. Rothax tears away the flimiplast sealing the lining.

It’s the most rational choice. Rothax presses his breastplate in place with practiced moves. At their prime, there were thirty thousand Marines. Rothax has probably fitted most of them, at some point or another. One way or another.

“Hold that,” he orders for this is his field and it’s what he knows. Bacara obeys. The new padding presses stiff against his bandages and Bacara cannot stop a grunt. Hands, scarred and ungloved and professional dart over Bacara’s shoulder, find where the plate sits heavy and slides inside between skin and plastoid.

“Press down,” Rothax orders quietly. Bacara obeys. Their armorer curls his hand into a fist, lets his knuckles compress the foam until it forms a bubble of air right around where it hurts the most. “Steady it in place.”

The lining no longer rubs.

“Better.”

He’s a stretch of un-ignorable heat behind Bacara. Incredible and unnatural and impossible, when he braces Bacara’s backplate in place with his own shoulder and chest.

“Deep breath.” He says. “Hold.”

Bacara breathes. Holds. Rothax shortens the clasps on one side.

“Out.” Bacara exhales. He adjusts the length of the connectors to the plackart. “Again.” Again, and the other side is ratcheted in place.

It sits nearly like his last one had. It takes Bacara days, sometimes weeks, before he finds the right combination of adjustments for his armor to sit comfortably. More and more, he just never finds it; pieces need to be replaced so quickly these days.

For a long, long time, Rothax’s hands pause where they ended, curled into a fist and pressed against Bacara’s lower back to make sure the plates wouldn’t rub past each other. For a long time, Bacara doesn’t know what to do.

“Sir,” Rothax finally proclaims like a benediction and taps his armor twice like a prayer.

“Thanks,” Bacara manages when he’s pulled enough of himself back inside.

“Anytime,” he promises. “Give ‘em hell sir.”

Some days he can’t quite manage to pour himself into his shell, even on those days he wants to. Bacara walks back to war, knowing he has brothers that will build it around him, if he needs them to.

* * *

There’s a kind of person that feels no fear at sharing themselves, spilling who they are to everyone they meet.

Commander Jet is very popular among the Marines. He’s their lifeline, their connection to the outside world. The 44th’s orders are to bring them what they need to survive, but the Winders bring them what they need to go on.

Credit Candies sometimes. Mismatched, thrift store blankets. Socks, thousands of them worn but warmer than issue, every few rotations. Pads of garbage holovision shows and awful books they’ll let you download free, passed around the barracks like communion.

Chocolate, once.

Bacara never takes any. Bacara can make himself keep moving. There’s a brother in a bunk somewhere who could only make himself get up tomorrow for just a square of chocolate. Bacara doesn’t need it.

Bacara welcomes the command as is proper, ensures they have berths for overnight. Leaves his man to their comforts.

“I called dark and heavy.” Jet appears from the shadows in the corners of Bacara’s bunk like a wraith. Bacara knows he locked the door. But then, Jet wouldn’t be commander of the 44th hazard zone resupply unit if he didn’t have a talent for getting into where he wasn’t welcomed. The gloom paints his light brown hair dark, the flyaway strands like a shadowed halo. The glow from Bacara’s storm lantern shines his smile in a slash of white. “You didn’t strike me as a ‘light and bubbly’ sort.”

There’s a pair of bottles dangling from his fingers, dark brown glass, labels in what looks like Corellian.

Jet laughs at his glare. “Only poison in this is sugar Commander, I’m not an idiot.”

Jet wouldn’t be Jet, if he didn’t go precisely where he isn’t invited. His side burns against Bacara’s, his arm burns across his shoulders. The ice-bite of the frosted glass bottles against his thigh do nothing to soothe.

“What is this.”

Jet laughs again. Out of his shell, he never takes anything seriously. Especially the ones he really should. He slides them both back against the bulkhead, their legs stretched across Bacara’s bed. His spacers’ pants paint a strange contrast pressed up against Bacara’s lower blacks.

“You already know what,” Jet says, and it’s true. Bacara does. Bacara’s known it for a while.

Daan and Krester both had left Torrent’s hold noticeably _strange_ in Torrent’s constant-contact ways. He should have been suspicious at how normal Rothax had seemed by comparison.

He _should_ have known as far back as WAC-47.

“Rex.”

Jet taps the bottles just so against the metal bedframe. The caps fly shining like stars to disappear somewhere in the dark. Bacara idly thinks he should care.

“He sends his love,” Jet agrees. “Though not in so many words. Figures someone like you would go for an only-slightly-less-reticent bastard.”

He’s not. Rex isn’t anywhere near reticent. But really only those closest to him might know that. And only Bacara will know how much of the Grand Army of the Republic Captain Rex of Torrent marshaled, to ensure Bacara got regular hugs.

The drink is just slightly sweet, and deep as promised. A carbonated caff, with a swirl of something milky that makes it go down smooth.

Bacara has to make himself slow down, savor it.

Jet’s fingers play lightly down his opposite shoulder. After a while, it no longer seems like it _should_ feel like needles. It’s… it’s _better_ , when they push harder. More present.

“That bad?”

Bacara grunts. It’s only as bad as it is. It’s endurable.

Jet doesn’t know him well enough to tell what he means.

They jostle a little, until Jet can close his hand tight on Bacara’s shoulder, grips til the shivering springs up and fades. He rubs slowly at Bacara’s shoulders until he can relax into the touch.

“They’re moving,” Jet swears under his breath. “Soon. Very soon. And when we go home, he says he won’t let us go again. He says they’ll have to pry us away.”

Winder always bring exactly what Nova needs to push on one more step.

Jet grips his shoulder. They drink.

A little more, a little more and maybe Bacara can find out what the appeal is, in giving yourself away without fear.

* * *

It’s a fact of a vod’s life that he never knew which morning was the last one he’d don his shell.

Neyo takes the shot before Bacara even registers the message. Mundi goes down, hard.

Bacara’s Novas are the best there is; there is no fumbling, no scrambling, no wondering or disbelief.

“ _Hold_!” Bacara snaps and steps bodily in the intended fan of fire that springs up in front of Neyo. “All hands _hold_.” Surprise is the only way to take a Jedi, Bacara knows. There _couldn’t_ be time to warn the troops.

“ _Fucking_ _hells_ ,” Krester spits. Every Nova has their fingers on trigger. Valors aren’t sure where to aim. Neyo huffs, supremely unconcerned with the blasters swung to point at him.

“Jumpy,” Neyo mutters and Bacara doesn’t bother to spare him the effort of a glare.

“Daan check Mundi. Rothax with him; containment. Krester get all hands pulling back, now. Everyone. All encounters disengage as soon as safe and pull back.”

That one. _That_ one takes them a second to understand. Just a second, but then they’re moving with sudden, desperate intensity.

Interfleet Comms go down, just as the Priority Alert had said they _wouldn’t_ for a ‘minor upgrade’ being rolled out.

‘ _Oya Vode’_ sends the Vod’alor before Priority goes down too. The deployments can’t talk to one another, can’t send word or warning. The Vode don’t need to.

“ _Respectfully,_ ” Bacara barks at the two pulling Mundi into suppression cuffs before the stun wears off. “He is no longer your superior but he is a man who’s fought beside you, you will treat him with respect.”

They move with care they can’t make themselves believe they’d have been showed by the Republic. They’ll drop him off somewhere mid-Rim, where he can make his way back towards the Core. They won’t leave him here, stuck beyond the blockade, like he does them when he returns to Coruscant. Bacara is just petty enough to make a point about that.

On the horizon, Valor ships sink out of the clouds like glutted great beasts. Behind him, Nova’s ground transport rumble to life in reply.

Neyo grabs his arm in a brutal, crushing grip and drags him about face. He’s smiling, _laughing_ he’s dropped his helmet and he rips Bacara’s off his head.

“Idiot,” Bacara rumbles in the spare space between their pressed foreheads. “Get off the battlefield _first_ before you celebrate.”

“The reunion with the Sexy Sidearms is going to be _fantastic_ ,” Neyo says instead, “and I won’t even have to be jealous of you this time.”

Bacara shouldn’t laugh; it only encourages the worst of Neyo’s excesses. He does anyway. It’s somehow better, like this. Still, he promised.

“WAC gives the best hugs,” he says.

Neyo crushes him to prove otherwise.

* * *

Valors stream out of the vehicles like someone cut the fence on their pen. Novas don’t hold formation but they hold back. Of the Novas, Bacara is the first to put feet on Concord Dawn.

The Vod’alor has promised he will keep them here. As they cover their hesitance with regimented precision, Bacara knows more than ever that they need it. He’s done the best he can, but there’s no doubt in his mind that what they’ve always needed was someone who could reach back across the gap of their shells. Connect.

The Vod’alor can do that. Bacara has seen it. Hope isn’t a feeling he’s gotten used to yet but he has a lifetime to work on that.

There’s a line of vode with holopads. There’s yelling, directions, housing, food, checking in for the census. Bacara doesn’t notice.

Rex meets him on the landing field, eyes gold and hair white under the white-blue light of their home sun. Novas hoot when the Captain catches him by the mouth.

“You’ve been busy, tat’ka,” Bacara murmurs, head to head, chest to chest, not knowing where one ends and the other begins.

“You’re a bit hard-headed,” Rex teases. “And you’d get shy if I did an _obvious_ big gesture.”

Neyo squawks. There’s a clatter, bodies hitting the grass and he’s suddenly muffled. The Valors _howl_.

Bacara doesn’t register them either. “Consider me seduced,” he allows.

Rex’s face glows. “Good. It would make your bunk assignment very awkward otherwise.”

He’s still laughing when Rex pulls him away.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [We only see our depths in analog](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24488365) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506)




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